Cocquyt told me that it almost seemed as if Van Leeuwenhoek knew about the new world. One of his scientific rivals said it was surprising that we never had the creativity to use these balls to observe little things against the daylight, and that an uneducated and ignorant man such as Van Leeuwenhoek had to teach this.
The fifth son of a basket maker was born in the small port city of the same name. He left for an apprenticeship as a dry goods seller in Amsterdam at the age of 16 and six years later married the daughter of a well-regarded local brewery and opened his own fabric shop.
He experienced immense personal tragedy while growing his business. Four of the five children he and his wife Barbara had died in infancy. He held a number of odd jobs in addition to running his draper shop and was the chief custodian of the local courthouse. Evidence that Van Leeuwenhoek had learned geometry can be found in his time as a town surveyor.
Sometime in his mid-thirties, his obsession with magnifying lens started. It isn't known how he found it. His writings don't talk about its origins. Many have speculated that he started using a lens to look at his cloth. He may have gotten caught up in the public mania for microscopes after reading Hooke's Micrographia. Van Leeuwenhoek never mentioned the book in his letters, but the timing was right and he read it. Even though he got into microscopy, by 1668 he was pursuing it with an unusual amount of determination. He noticed that chalk consisted of small transparent particles, and these transparent particles lying one upon another, and he thought that was the reason why chalk.
He was already making the world's most powerful lens by 16 73. Had it not been for a doctor named Renier de Graaf, his obscurity would have continued, and the discovery of microorganisms would have served only to satisfy his curiosities.
On September 7, 1674, Van Leeuwenhoek sent the letter reporting his shocking discovery: Within an otherwise unremarkable drop of pond water he had seen 'glittering' creatures a thousand times smaller than any animal he had previously observed
De Graaf had come to some renown through his experiments using dyes to determine organ function, and in 16 73 he introduced Van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society with a note saying he was a "most ingenious person." One biographer notes that Van Leeuwenhoek described the body parts of a louse in his precise yet-meandering writing style that is, as one biographer notes, an almost total lack of coherence. He sent five more letters to the Royal Society over the course of a year, conveying interesting but not controversial observations about the structure of his fingernails. On September 7, 1674, he sent a letter to his wife saying that he had seen creatures a thousand times smaller than he had seen before.
Henry Oldenburg, the Society's secretary, replied to Van Leeuwenhoek with understandable restraint: "This phenomenon, and some of the following ones seeming to be very extraordinary, the author was wanted to acquaint us with his method of observing, that others may confirm such observations as these." The accounts of a few local people who had looked through his lens were provided by Van Leeuwenhoek. I don't teach anyone how to see many animalcules at one time or how to see the smallest ones. He said he kept for himself alone. When Hooke asked how he made his observations, the scientist refused because he was known to himself.
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